Be careful with wheelweights as some of them have zinc and you do NOT want to melt that - it alloys with lead and turns it into oatmeal and makes it absolutely worthless for bullet casting; they usually have Zn written on them to denote zinc wheelweights, or drop them on the ground, lead makes a plunk and zinc makes a plink.
In hindsight it probably would’ve been helpful if me to mention something like that. I wasn’t worried because I had specifically picked out the lead ones, this batch had very few wheel weights to deal with at all and the previous time I just skimmed them off with the steel clips before they melted BUT you’re absolutely right, and people should know about it in case they want to do the same
@@thubprintrollyrelayman is actually incorrect. Zinc is completely immiscible in lead and floats on top, as well it has a higher melting point than lead. Due to these properties as well as silver being something like 200x more dissolvable in zinc than lead, adding zinc to lead pourd straight from ore like galena is a common, less toxic way of extracting silver from lead. It's a common myth not to mix them because people constantly stir lead, and if the zinc cools during stirring then it gets chunky and some lead can stick to it. But if you stop stirring, let the zinc melt, resolidify, you can just scoop it out. Or, you can save the time and just sort out weights that are marked "zn" as I'm sure you're already well aware of
@@thubprint and anyone else: if temperature is low enough the zinc weights won't melt, just float (for a while). I find that two or three zinc ones will mess up about twenty pounds of lead, more than that and it is a problem.
My dad and i used to sit out in his shed and make sinkers for fishing. He bought 2 molds for $40. He made his money back on the first hauo we made selling them. He had molds for every weight anyone wanted.
In the matter of demand for pure lead, as a muzzleloading enthusiast who casts his own bullets (round ball), I rely on dead-soft pure lead for use in my rifles and pistols. Pure lead is critical in creating a projectile whose relative softness allows for ease of loading in concert with a cloth patch and fills the barrel's grooves to ensure accuracy. Hence the need for pure lead.
@@greywolfoutdoorshomestead9962 the days of pure lead wheel weights are just a distant memory and today they are composed of alloys containing bismuth and/or tin and too hard for use in muzzleloaders. Haven't seen plastic ones (yet) but I will keep my eyes open for such.
I haven't been able to start into scrapping but after beginning to sometimes watch your channel i enjoy the fact that i can learn as much as possible thank you doing this
Don't throw out the dross. It's still probably 45% lead, maybe 45% tin or antimony. Also, don't skim the dross until you need to (I know you were scooping out other contaminants), as, any fresh lead exposed to air will turn into more dross. To reverse the process, you need something that will strip the oxygen off of the lead, and a little better than just parafin does. 2 options: 1 - Lye (sodium hydroxide), or, 2 - Potash (potassium hydroxide). Potash is much better. Sprinkle it onto the melt like sugar on your corn flakes and stir it around a bit on the surface, it'll form a black tar-like substance and dump all the molten lead back out of it into the melt and leave the last bits of dross. It's caustic though, so, that dross you'll want to dump into a pot of water to dilute it, or mist with vinegar to neutralize it.
Nice, thank you! I was expecting to just throw the whole pile into a pot and put a lid on it, my hope was all the smoke from whatever leftover bits of sticks and leaves and dirt are in most of my skimmings would insulate the lead remnants in a reducing atmosphere and do a passable job. There is quite a bit of dirt and junk in the bucket. A bit of potash in the mix would probably go a long way though 👍
@@thubprintfor a cheap easy test, drain cleaner is sodium hydroxide. If you know any pressure wash companies they should have sodium at least. Ones that clean restaurants will have both. I bought it by the pallet at a dollar or two a pound.
You should pour some rods for soldering bateries and terminals. They stack the same, but they have a direct use and won't need to be remelted. If you pay to melt lead, you might as well melt it into something functional.
Hello, good implementation option. I pour it into spoons and take it to a flea market, they take it all at once and it’s three times more expensive than selling it for metal.
This was great! While I'm not interested in this sales opportunity for myself, I just sell what lead I get to the scrapyard, it was another great breakdown of the relevant issues. I've worked for an electronics manufacturer for decades and I've done my share of pot soldering of circuit boards, and that color when you skim the solder is very cool to watch.
I really need to get my furnace up and running. I have wanted one for so long and it is in the box UGH. I know I dont need it for lead but it certainly reminds me of fun projects I am missing. Great deal on the ingots - fast turn around or not. My yard tends not to get too much lead except the wheel weights kind.
I bought some ingots at a lawn sale. Unfortunately I found out it had some zinc in it which ruined it for casting lead bullets and round balls. My cousin who is a plumber gave me some scrap that had some pieces of zinc included in it that he insisted were lead. However from past experience, I knew otherwise. I thanked him but I will not melt those zinc pieces to contaminate my pure lead. They look similar which makes them easy to appear as though they are lead.
I refined, alloyed, and sold lead for a few years. The bubbles and discoloration are simple fixes with simple explanations. The discoloration comes from whatever is coating your molds be it Teflon, copper, motor oil, dirt, ect. So to clean it up, clean the molds to bare metal, remelt and repour. The bubbles are from water vapor. Literally everything on earth is saturated with water to some extent, and even if the amount on the surface of the metal seems infinitely small, water expands by about 1,600x it's volume when transitioning from liquid to gas so small bubbles appearing on your ingots just means you didn't preheat your molds. Since water boils away at 100⁰c, throw a bunch of lead in your pot, once the crap you want to burn off stops smoking place your molds on the pot like a lid to dry them. This provides the added benefit of trapping heat in your pot which can melt pieces noticeably faster as well as burning off any organic material that may have collected before your first pour thus preventing smoking and discoloration.
Also, I used to fix the rainbow shit by introducing oxygen. I made an apparatus with a regulator hooked to an air compressor and slowly bubbled the air through in a tall pot to oxidize out the bullshit. If you don't, then only what comes into contact with air at the surface will oxidize, trapping everything below away from the air. You could also do a fuckton of stirring but that's hours of work vs a couple min of slow bubbling
The pretty blue color on the finished ingots is a giveaway that they are hard lead or impure. Try lowering your temp to a few ⁰ above melting, preheat then cool your molds, and pour. They should harden quickly before the discoloration. People want hard lead, but if they see the color they are unlikely to buy online. Especially your big purchasers. This is just my experience though. It's not screwing someone by hiding the impurities, it's more like not letting someone meet the cow your about to make their dinner from. Hard lead is great for fishing weights or shotgun slugs and whatever, but the discoloration is just a turnoff generally
Regular wheel weights are typically mixed with antimony, but strip weights are usually the same soft lead as that sheet lead, so always process them separately. They're the lead weights without clips and come in strips of squares with some kinda adhesive
I just finished casting 000 buckshot, I had 20 lbs of scrap lead I bought and refined down in my hot pot before using my production pot. This was my first time playing with lead and I'm hooked. Have fun and thanks for the video
Using a scrap melting pot (separate) and a actual bullet casting furnace is a must. You see so many inexperienced people putting all that filthy scrap into their RCBS, Lee, Lyman pot and wondering why the pour valve leaks and they keep wrecking the vessels. A large cast iron Dutch oven with a LP turbo burner works pretty good if you haven't made a custom one out of heavy steel large diameter pipe yet. They have a t-handle seat valve and pour from the bottom just like your good furnaces. You can use cast iron skillets or stainless steel sauce pans too if you have limited fabrication skills or are on a tight budget. The main thing is always using 2 different pots to get rid of all the dross crap first before contaminating your good pot.
@@JohnDoeEagle1 definitely keeping things seperate, my production pot only will ever see lead that's been cleaned up and refined very well, I used my hot pot for that. By the time I cast the buckshot I had cleaned up the lead three times and had very little contaminants left. I have a buddy who runs a scrap yard, I haven't collected bullets from the range, if I let him know how much I want he has it ready for me.
Fyi. If you can locate people who cast bullets they will definitely choose the wheel weight ingots. That material is more hard and is ready to use for most bullets.
@@E-hab That is false for normal pistol and rifle bullets. Pretty much only paper patch bullets use pure lead. Just look up the hardness needed for different velocities of bullets. To make a mix sweeter, we add tin and antimony. Tin causes the molds to fill better for better details and antimony makes the lead harder. It is very easy to find forums filled with people talking about using linotype for bullets. The Castboolits forum is all about cast boolits. You have not read that many comments then. Now, most wheel weights are steel and zinc, so of course we don't want those. Zinc can not be easily cut with lineman's or side cutters, it weighs less, rings when tapped on a hard surface, often is somewhat clean or shiny, and it reacts with pool acid. That is how we sort the good from the bad. Lead weights are dull or dirty, have less or no ring to them, and can be nicked or cut with good cutters. In california, old weights are great but they are likely all gone from tire shops because lead has been replaced for so many years now. My uncle gave me all the old lead weights that were sitting in his auto shop because he doesn't do tire work.
@@CGT80 Us long range guys want butter soft lead because we have better control over not only hardness but weight .If it almost pure lead , we can get the precise alloy we want . And consistency is what long range is all about
@@huckstirred7112 That is certainly an option, but a more expensive one.......what isn't expensive about long range or precision shooting? LOL For steel silhouette and action shooting we will take the most bank for the buck and it is usually from starting with a somewhat hard alloy. You are right though, it can be a pain when you have mystery alloy and have to figure out if it needs tweaked for the application.
That is a good idea for many. Especially if you're doing stain glass crafts or soldering electronics. Do be aware of your audio I had my cell phone on full blast. RUclips is lowering creators volumes and raising advertisers volumes. Which is understandable RUclips has to make a profit and listen to the advertisers.
M8, I'm amazed for your willingness to melt the lead and make it happen , cheers. I found here that some people by the lead to make fishing weights by the ton , so I sell it as is for a small profit . Keep up the good work . God bless y'all.
I get my lead free from builders. The builders were renewing the plumbing. The house was very old, and the water pipes were made from lead crazy. I managed to get 96 kg in lead used in plumbing last month.
maybe for pistol shooters .Us long range guys will travel a hundred miles for soft lead that way we can Taylor the lead hardness . That way we get a more consistent mix .That consistent mix is a more consistent bullet weight .That is essential to shooting a thousand yard match
I work at a scrap yard and just purchased 18000 of these wheel weights @ .20 cents per pound. I found some patents on google that you can put sodium in it and the sodium will bind with the antimony and you will have 100% soft lead. Someone in a bullet casting forum said they have heard of copper sulfate being used instead of sodium. I made out pretty good on this so far. The workers put a lot of soft lead in these bins and huge boulders of dirty lead ( has steel in it )
People buying lead ingots want to know how hard it is. You should get yourself a way to test the BHN hardness or at least a crude test using a pencil or something
*18:00** did you ever get a hardness tester?* *_Everyone reading this. Get a variable hardness pencil set. Wider range the better._* You scribe the lead with the pencils, starting at softest, until it puts a groove in the lead. There's a chart online that converts the pencil hardness into Brinell. Best part of that is, hardness tester = $80, pencil set = $8
Yes brother pure lead has rainbow oil effect when over heated if it has no rainbow when over heated then tin is present. If you drop some rainbow lead tiny bit into a ml of hcl it will completely dissolve leaving a clear liquid if tin is present you will get a yellow hue. Awesome episode
So the color isn't from a bismuth impurity? That was my first thought because I have never seen that color on any of the lead I've 🫠 melted but did have it on a bar of 'lead' that I bought from eBay as well as a lot of I guess the best description is a cottage cheese type of impurities that I assumed were other metals that had been mixed into the bar that had a higher melting point. It was some real grungy stuff.
@@ManMountainMetals no brother definitely not. Lead is so easy to over heat. Experiment take your rainbow bar and put back ingot mould. Then heat with a blowtorch until liquid then let cool and have a look and see you rainbow effect is still indeed a rainbow.
@empirefinds nah, it wasn't a rainbow. It was purple 💜. It also stuck to everything like glue, left a pretty thick layer stuck to the sides of the melting pot. The guy who sold it to me also sold various other low melting point metals like antimony, tin, zinc, bismuth, lead, and cadmium. I think that what I got was just the dregs and the dross of all those different metals. He had made everything into ingots you see and everything leftover, the skimmings or whatnot was probably what was in these bars. They only showed purple when melted, steely gray when cooled. Oh, and it turned purple immediately upon melting. There was still 3/4 of an unmelted bar in the pot. The first rivulets of metal came out silver and then glazed over with this purple film that I have always associated with bismuth. Real grainy texture, too, when it was melted, kinda lumpy. Like not everything was melting at the same temperature. I have 2 bars left of the 3 purchased, and I just use them as weights for my flasks when I do sand castings.
Copper coated lead causes the same effect ie lead from old boilers contain copper this Could be the cause you have to think about temperatures turning metals into gasses as bismuth has very low melting temperature it stands to reason it would become a gas very quickly making it very hard to alloy maybe lead would have worked done no research on the matter but has my attention now kind regards brother
Oxidation isn't from heat it's from oxygen. Although heat does help oxidise there's no way to avoid it unless you add argon or a carbon layer at the top
Yes, you're way hotter than necessary. The colors are oxides of the lead, tin. Lighter metals float because they're less dense and not because of surface tension even though surface tension is significant. If you continue to do this a proper thermometer is a good investment. Sawdust makes an even better flux than candle wax but it can't be from plywood or pressure treated lumber due to the chemicals and glue involved. Bullet casters would prefer to start with "pure" wheelweight metal or straight relatively pure lead and blend it themselves. For cast bullets for modern ammunition I prefer to start making my alloy with wheelweight metal. It requires fewer additives than if starting with pure lead. The muzzle loading folks prefer the softer pure lead without question. Hardness tells you almost nothing about purity. You could have antimony, arsenic or tin in the metal and all of those metals make lead harder. A hardness tester will tell you that you have pure or nearly pure lead. Your scrap yard may have an XRF gun that will give very accurate analysis.
You can turn Lead Antimony alloy into balls for ball mills. They're a special variety because they don't spark and are harder then pure so they last longer, which is crucial for milling flammable materials. Brass is the only other choice for non sparking balls and tends to cost more. Great vid
I think the lumps and bottom of your first setting gets were from not preheating the form pan.. too much moisture in your form pans can lead to explosions
The pits in the first pour is the Teflon burning out of the brownie sheets. It will cast deformed ugly ingots until you burn it all the way out. I always take my new pans in the blast cabinet first and blast with 120 grit aluminum oxide at 100 - 110 PSI. They don't do that anymore if you either season them first or blast out the Teflon.
I dont remember where you are, but you might be able to get the expended bullets from outdoor gun ranges. If they ate using a berm as a safety backdrop, you could just sift all the rounds out with their permission, of course. You might even find a little copper, too!
I always wondered what happened to Reese after Malcolm in the Middle finished. Maybe if you added blue paint in to the mix you could of Invented "blead".
the first batch had discoloration because it came from the chemical coating in the pan. usually only visible for very first pour, then gone. you can get bubbling from the ingot tray being too cold vs the molten bath
This video is like relaxation therapy for me. Great for my mental health and hopefully many others. You sir are the king fu Panda of scrap metal 👌 skadous 😂
It always amazes me that the steel clips from wheel weights float on the molten lead. Yes I understand the dwnsity factors but it's just weird seeing steel float.
13:40 Having pure lead makes it easier because the guy has a metal "frame" there he pours the lead over. If it has all kind of shit in it that might not bond good with the wire and it will move inside the cast
Awesome video. Please remind people to make sure any lead you are going to drop into molten lead needs to be perfectly dry. No condensation or such. Same for the molds you are pouring lead into. I am sure most everyone here is aware of it, but molten lead can react violently to water/moisture.
If you know someone who works at a pawn shop, ask them to test your ingots with their XRF gun. XRF is used to test preciou metals. It shoots metals with Xrays and gets a graph of all the elements present based on how the Xrays bouce back.
So CUZ, what d[you do with the doss/slagg/waiste? Is it scrappable or garbage? Yep, there is something about liquified metal! Like the information, but dumpster diving search for treasures a wee bit more fun.
Ammunition reloading hobbyists that cast their own projectiles will buy lead. Also dive shops that cast their own dive weights. Lead is also used in sail boat keel weight. Both a good source and a market.
Just cashed in 2 40gal electric water heaters in newfoundland i got $1 each next time i will leave them for the trash man. I removed the brass t&p valves b4 selling them
Wheel weight lead needs tin added usually in the form of solder 60% lead 40% tin or 50/50 antimony is undesirable in that it’s hard to remove, it Is common in scrap battery plates these are hard to prevent shorting of the plate in a car crash.
Watching bigstackD's vid this week I find myself wondering what's the difference between die-cast Al and his zinc finds, and then of course how to tell them apart. Thoughts? Video idea?
I haven’t watched his most recent vid so I’m not sure how he’s using the term die-cast but I always use it interchangeably with the term zinc, which is also a misrepresentation because you’ll probably never find “zinc”. What’s usually found is an alloy of aluminium and zinc, very popular for casting because the melting temp is relatively low and it fills complex shapes really well. It’s also called “pot metal” or “zamek”. It’s a duller grey Color than aluminium, if you apply a solution of stump-out it will fizz and bubble, and it’s also noticeably heavier than aluminium would be. For me though, I always just look for the sprue marks: little circular spots that show where the material flowed into the mood and the sprue was broken away. Aluminium won’t have those.
I use to sell printing type for bullets because it is a harder lead. I once filled a flat rate box to ship it in. You could hardly pick it up, must have created havoc going through the postal system. I think they now put a weight limit on the flat rate boxes. I also once melted and poured a 9000 lb sailboat keel. Fun to watch stainless bolts floating in melted lead. If you ever have to cut up some lead that is too big to move or melt ,the way to do that is with a chainsaw.
hey man i love your videos, but i am not an expertt but i think you introduced moisture at 5 55 , im guessing you know why that is super dangerous, maybe putting the peices next to the fire would be a great way to make sure there is no moisture
Most of us today are only looking for soft lead. I mold sinkers and bullets. Sinkers are ok to do with dirty lead but bullets you want as pure as possible.
Soft pure lead is only good for black powder bullets. It's way too soft to be used in modern center fire smokeless powder cartridges. Even if you powder coat your bullets you should have at least 9 or 10 BHN. Pure lead is around 6 BHN or so and needs tin and antimony added to it to make it harder. You don't want to shoot anything in black powder firearms except pure lead.
Great video. Love how thorough you are with all of the steps and the "numbers". Did you happen to add in the expenses for the propane required? If so, how much was that total?
I didn’t calculate it into the totals as shown but over the two afternoons I spent heating the pot I used the same propane bottle, which had a little left at the end. I’d say just under $40?
I use to make my own bullets and have about 1000 pound of lead in 1 pound ingets bars that i don't need anymore so how did you sell your lead, where at?
iirc, you sell ingots to folks that cast reloading bullets. i know a guy who likes the clip on wheel weights as a way to control the hardness. you might consider melting the weights separately and marking them as such.
Be careful with wheelweights as some of them have zinc and you do NOT want to melt that - it alloys with lead and turns it into oatmeal and makes it absolutely worthless for bullet casting; they usually have Zn written on them to denote zinc wheelweights, or drop them on the ground, lead makes a plunk and zinc makes a plink.
Thank you ill keep this in mind
In hindsight it probably would’ve been helpful if me to mention something like that. I wasn’t worried because I had specifically picked out the lead ones, this batch had very few wheel weights to deal with at all and the previous time I just skimmed them off with the steel clips before they melted BUT you’re absolutely right, and people should know about it in case they want to do the same
@@thubprintrollyrelayman is actually incorrect. Zinc is completely immiscible in lead and floats on top, as well it has a higher melting point than lead. Due to these properties as well as silver being something like 200x more dissolvable in zinc than lead, adding zinc to lead pourd straight from ore like galena is a common, less toxic way of extracting silver from lead. It's a common myth not to mix them because people constantly stir lead, and if the zinc cools during stirring then it gets chunky and some lead can stick to it. But if you stop stirring, let the zinc melt, resolidify, you can just scoop it out. Or, you can save the time and just sort out weights that are marked "zn" as I'm sure you're already well aware of
@@thubprint and anyone else: if temperature is low enough the zinc weights won't melt, just float (for a while). I find that two or three zinc ones will mess up about twenty pounds of lead, more than that and it is a problem.
Great advice
When I sit in my garage I either listen to some 60s music or listen to you as i separate my scap.rock on bro all the best from Cleveland Ohio
I also want to add is that the extra work you do to edit and put videos like this together are worth it
Thank you so much! They don’t always perform as well as I hope but I really enjoy trying my best 😊
My dad and i used to sit out in his shed and make sinkers for fishing. He bought 2 molds for $40. He made his money back on the first hauo we made selling them. He had molds for every weight anyone wanted.
In the matter of demand for pure lead, as a muzzleloading enthusiast who casts his own bullets (round ball), I rely on dead-soft pure lead for use in my rifles and pistols. Pure lead is critical in creating a projectile whose relative softness allows for ease of loading in concert with a cloth patch and fills the barrel's grooves to ensure accuracy. Hence the need for pure lead.
I to am a muzzleloader shooter. And I cast my own round balls. I'm always looking for wheel weights but more and more over them now are plastic
@@greywolfoutdoorshomestead9962 the days of pure lead wheel weights are just a distant memory and today they are composed of alloys containing bismuth and/or tin and too hard for use in muzzleloaders. Haven't seen plastic ones (yet) but I will keep my eyes open for such.
@@greywolfoutdoorshomestead9962Iron and zinc wheel weights are sometimes plastic coated but they are not made of plastic.
I haven't been able to start into scrapping but after beginning to sometimes watch your channel i enjoy the fact that i can learn as much as possible thank you doing this
I bet you put a big smile on bullet reloaders faces, thank you for sharing friend.
Did you preheat your mold? That will help avoid those bubbles and give a better surface. Pretty cool project.
😊 CV
Don't throw out the dross. It's still probably 45% lead, maybe 45% tin or antimony. Also, don't skim the dross until you need to (I know you were scooping out other contaminants), as, any fresh lead exposed to air will turn into more dross. To reverse the process, you need something that will strip the oxygen off of the lead, and a little better than just parafin does. 2 options: 1 - Lye (sodium hydroxide), or, 2 - Potash (potassium hydroxide). Potash is much better. Sprinkle it onto the melt like sugar on your corn flakes and stir it around a bit on the surface, it'll form a black tar-like substance and dump all the molten lead back out of it into the melt and leave the last bits of dross. It's caustic though, so, that dross you'll want to dump into a pot of water to dilute it, or mist with vinegar to neutralize it.
Nice, thank you! I was expecting to just throw the whole pile into a pot and put a lid on it, my hope was all the smoke from whatever leftover bits of sticks and leaves and dirt are in most of my skimmings would insulate the lead remnants in a reducing atmosphere and do a passable job. There is quite a bit of dirt and junk in the bucket. A bit of potash in the mix would probably go a long way though 👍
@@thubprintfor a cheap easy test, drain cleaner is sodium hydroxide. If you know any pressure wash companies they should have sodium at least. Ones that clean restaurants will have both. I bought it by the pallet at a dollar or two a pound.
great vid! I used to have a foundry and i miss seeing metal turn to into a liquid mirror. Thanks for taking me back!
Nicely done. Impressed with both the video and the information. Looking forward to getting into melting later this year.
You should pour some rods for soldering bateries and terminals. They stack the same, but they have a direct use and won't need to be remelted. If you pay to melt lead, you might as well melt it into something functional.
Cool! I’ll look for a mold, I’d much rather have rods, they’d be easier to portion as well
i picked up a 150 pound fishing weight on marketplace for $50. was pretty pleased with that. Good video Thub
Hello, good implementation option. I pour it into spoons and take it to a flea market, they take it all at once and it’s three times more expensive than selling it for metal.
What kind of spoons? As in, what size?
@@superdud124 a regular tablespoon used for soup
YAY!! it's that time again. Look forward to your vids all week.
I also learnt abot flux 👍
That was so well done. You are really a unique scrapper and I love it
Long time fan, Love the videos man; always leave it better than you found it. Keep making content Brother🦧👌🫡
This was great! While I'm not interested in this sales opportunity for myself, I just sell what lead I get to the scrapyard, it was another great breakdown of the relevant issues.
I've worked for an electronics manufacturer for decades and I've done my share of pot soldering of circuit boards, and that color when you skim the solder is very cool to watch.
Hi, the circuit board solderings give a pure product or a mix of different ones, thanks ?
@@maxcloutier5285 The circuit boards aren't for scrap, but part of my job. It used to be tin-lead solder, but is now lead-free.
good video man!!!! not aq bad profit!!! have a great weekend!!
Thanks man, hope you’re doing great!
I really need to get my furnace up and running. I have wanted one for so long and it is in the box UGH. I know I dont need it for lead but it certainly reminds me of fun projects I am missing. Great deal on the ingots - fast turn around or not. My yard tends not to get too much lead except the wheel weights kind.
I bought some ingots at a lawn sale. Unfortunately I found out it had some zinc in it which ruined it for casting lead bullets and round balls. My cousin who is a plumber gave me some scrap that had some pieces of zinc included in it that he insisted were lead. However from past experience, I knew otherwise. I thanked him but I will not melt those zinc pieces to contaminate my pure lead. They look similar which makes them easy to appear as though they are lead.
I refined, alloyed, and sold lead for a few years. The bubbles and discoloration are simple fixes with simple explanations.
The discoloration comes from whatever is coating your molds be it Teflon, copper, motor oil, dirt, ect. So to clean it up, clean the molds to bare metal, remelt and repour.
The bubbles are from water vapor. Literally everything on earth is saturated with water to some extent, and even if the amount on the surface of the metal seems infinitely small, water expands by about 1,600x it's volume when transitioning from liquid to gas so small bubbles appearing on your ingots just means you didn't preheat your molds. Since water boils away at 100⁰c, throw a bunch of lead in your pot, once the crap you want to burn off stops smoking place your molds on the pot like a lid to dry them. This provides the added benefit of trapping heat in your pot which can melt pieces noticeably faster as well as burning off any organic material that may have collected before your first pour thus preventing smoking and discoloration.
Also, I used to fix the rainbow shit by introducing oxygen. I made an apparatus with a regulator hooked to an air compressor and slowly bubbled the air through in a tall pot to oxidize out the bullshit. If you don't, then only what comes into contact with air at the surface will oxidize, trapping everything below away from the air. You could also do a fuckton of stirring but that's hours of work vs a couple min of slow bubbling
The pretty blue color on the finished ingots is a giveaway that they are hard lead or impure. Try lowering your temp to a few ⁰ above melting, preheat then cool your molds, and pour. They should harden quickly before the discoloration. People want hard lead, but if they see the color they are unlikely to buy online. Especially your big purchasers. This is just my experience though. It's not screwing someone by hiding the impurities, it's more like not letting someone meet the cow your about to make their dinner from. Hard lead is great for fishing weights or shotgun slugs and whatever, but the discoloration is just a turnoff generally
Regular wheel weights are typically mixed with antimony, but strip weights are usually the same soft lead as that sheet lead, so always process them separately. They're the lead weights without clips and come in strips of squares with some kinda adhesive
Your smithing skill is 100!!
I just finished casting 000 buckshot, I had 20 lbs of scrap lead I bought and refined down in my hot pot before using my production pot. This was my first time playing with lead and I'm hooked. Have fun and thanks for the video
It’s pretty fun! Just gotta be careful to use PPE, wouldn’t want to absorb too much of it
@@thubprint definitely, I learned welding when I was young, proper precautions are a must when dealing with fumes and liquid metal
Using a scrap melting pot (separate) and a actual bullet casting furnace is a must. You see so many inexperienced people putting all that filthy scrap into their RCBS, Lee, Lyman pot and wondering why the pour valve leaks and they keep wrecking the vessels. A large cast iron Dutch oven with a LP turbo burner works pretty good if you haven't made a custom one out of heavy steel large diameter pipe yet. They have a t-handle seat valve and pour from the bottom just like your good furnaces. You can use cast iron skillets or stainless steel sauce pans too if you have limited fabrication skills or are on a tight budget. The main thing is always using 2 different pots to get rid of all the dross crap first before contaminating your good pot.
@@JohnDoeEagle1 definitely keeping things seperate, my production pot only will ever see lead that's been cleaned up and refined very well, I used my hot pot for that. By the time I cast the buckshot I had cleaned up the lead three times and had very little contaminants left. I have a buddy who runs a scrap yard, I haven't collected bullets from the range, if I let him know how much I want he has it ready for me.
@@JohnDoeEagle1 right now I'm keeping it to a smaller operation, if I start doing larger quantities I'll definitely be looking into my options.
Fyi. If you can locate people who cast bullets they will definitely choose the wheel weight ingots. That material is more hard and is ready to use for most bullets.
Bullet makers comments says the opposite!
@@E-hab That is false for normal pistol and rifle bullets. Pretty much only paper patch bullets use pure lead. Just look up the hardness needed for different velocities of bullets. To make a mix sweeter, we add tin and antimony. Tin causes the molds to fill better for better details and antimony makes the lead harder. It is very easy to find forums filled with people talking about using linotype for bullets. The Castboolits forum is all about cast boolits. You have not read that many comments then. Now, most wheel weights are steel and zinc, so of course we don't want those. Zinc can not be easily cut with lineman's or side cutters, it weighs less, rings when tapped on a hard surface, often is somewhat clean or shiny, and it reacts with pool acid. That is how we sort the good from the bad. Lead weights are dull or dirty, have less or no ring to them, and can be nicked or cut with good cutters. In california, old weights are great but they are likely all gone from tire shops because lead has been replaced for so many years now. My uncle gave me all the old lead weights that were sitting in his auto shop because he doesn't do tire work.
@@CGT80 Us long range guys want butter soft lead because we have better control over not only hardness but weight .If it almost pure lead , we can get the precise alloy we want . And consistency is what long range is all about
@@huckstirred7112 That is certainly an option, but a more expensive one.......what isn't expensive about long range or precision shooting? LOL For steel silhouette and action shooting we will take the most bank for the buck and it is usually from starting with a somewhat hard alloy. You are right though, it can be a pain when you have mystery alloy and have to figure out if it needs tweaked for the application.
"Being in a hurry is expensive" wow that's sage
That is a good idea for many. Especially if you're doing stain glass crafts or soldering electronics. Do be aware of your audio I had my cell phone on full blast. RUclips is lowering creators volumes and raising advertisers volumes. Which is understandable RUclips has to make a profit and listen to the advertisers.
M8, I'm amazed for your willingness to melt the lead and make it happen , cheers. I found here that some people by the lead to make fishing weights by the ton , so I sell it as is for a small profit . Keep up the good work . God bless y'all.
Buy as in purchase not by as in by the way. Learn the difference.
@@ntal5859 buy the way thank you for correcting my 4 year old English education
I get my lead free from builders. The builders were renewing the plumbing. The house was very old, and the water pipes were made from lead crazy. I managed to get 96 kg in lead used in plumbing last month.
Enjoyed your use of the term Snicklefritz. Well done.
I used to collect lead as a kid, it always paid out the most, you should focus on collecting it more often, ask around building sites 👍🏻👌🏻❤️🇬🇧
Just be safe my friend. Have a better than decent weekend broham.
Wheel weight lead is more ideal for actual bullets. Pure lead is best for shotgun slugs and pellets.
maybe for pistol shooters .Us long range guys will travel a hundred miles for soft lead that way we can Taylor the lead hardness . That way we get a more consistent mix .That consistent mix is a more consistent bullet weight .That is essential to shooting a thousand yard match
Thanks for sharing the details (costs, pros & cons).
I would like to see a video on u selling Copper bars locally aswell I think that would be a intriguing video
I work at a scrap yard and just purchased 18000 of these wheel weights @ .20 cents per pound. I found some patents on google that you can put sodium in it and the sodium will bind with the antimony and you will have 100% soft lead. Someone in a bullet casting forum said they have heard of copper sulfate being used instead of sodium. I made out pretty good on this so far. The workers put a lot of soft lead in these bins and huge boulders of dirty lead ( has steel in it )
People buying lead ingots want to know how hard it is. You should get yourself a way to test the BHN hardness or at least a crude test using a pencil or something
That was a cool experiment and great food for thought!
oooo the different colors when it melts makes it look a little like bismuth
*18:00** did you ever get a hardness tester?*
*_Everyone reading this. Get a variable hardness pencil set. Wider range the better._*
You scribe the lead with the pencils, starting at softest, until it puts a groove in the lead.
There's a chart online that converts the pencil hardness into Brinell.
Best part of that is, hardness tester = $80, pencil set = $8
Yes brother pure lead has rainbow oil effect when over heated if it has no rainbow when over heated then tin is present. If you drop some rainbow lead tiny bit into a ml of hcl it will completely dissolve leaving a clear liquid if tin is present you will get a yellow hue. Awesome episode
So the color isn't from a bismuth impurity? That was my first thought because I have never seen that color on any of the lead I've 🫠 melted but did have it on a bar of 'lead' that I bought from eBay as well as a lot of I guess the best description is a cottage cheese type of impurities that I assumed were other metals that had been mixed into the bar that had a higher melting point. It was some real grungy stuff.
@@ManMountainMetals no brother definitely not. Lead is so easy to over heat. Experiment take your rainbow bar and put back ingot mould. Then heat with a blowtorch until liquid then let cool and have a look and see you rainbow effect is still indeed a rainbow.
@empirefinds nah, it wasn't a rainbow. It was purple 💜. It also stuck to everything like glue, left a pretty thick layer stuck to the sides of the melting pot. The guy who sold it to me also sold various other low melting point metals like antimony, tin, zinc, bismuth, lead, and cadmium. I think that what I got was just the dregs and the dross of all those different metals. He had made everything into ingots you see and everything leftover, the skimmings or whatnot was probably what was in these bars. They only showed purple when melted, steely gray when cooled. Oh, and it turned purple immediately upon melting. There was still 3/4 of an unmelted bar in the pot. The first rivulets of metal came out silver and then glazed over with this purple film that I have always associated with bismuth. Real grainy texture, too, when it was melted, kinda lumpy. Like not everything was melting at the same temperature. I have 2 bars left of the 3 purchased, and I just use them as weights for my flasks when I do sand castings.
Copper coated lead causes the same effect ie lead from old boilers contain copper this Could be the cause you have to think about temperatures turning metals into gasses as bismuth has very low melting temperature it stands to reason it would become a gas very quickly making it very hard to alloy maybe lead would have worked done no research on the matter but has my attention now kind regards brother
@@empirefinds subbed
I appreciate the numbers break downs more than anything. Thank you sir.
Always interesting.👍
Saw dust works great as flux to I use both for reloading when I casting projectiles .
Thanks for sharing the details (costs, pros & cons).From Hamilton Ontario
Oxidation isn't from heat it's from oxygen. Although heat does help oxidise there's no way to avoid it unless you add argon or a carbon layer at the top
Yes, you're way hotter than necessary. The colors are oxides of the lead, tin. Lighter metals float because they're less dense and not because of surface tension even though surface tension is significant. If you continue to do this a proper thermometer is a good investment. Sawdust makes an even better flux than candle wax but it can't be from plywood or pressure treated lumber due to the chemicals and glue involved. Bullet casters would prefer to start with "pure" wheelweight metal or straight relatively pure lead and blend it themselves.
For cast bullets for modern ammunition I prefer to start making my alloy with wheelweight metal. It requires fewer additives than if starting with pure lead. The muzzle loading folks prefer the softer pure lead without question.
Hardness tells you almost nothing about purity. You could have antimony, arsenic or tin in the metal and all of those metals make lead harder. A hardness tester will tell you that you have pure or nearly pure lead. Your scrap yard may have an XRF gun that will give very accurate analysis.
I just melted 300# of lead pipe.
The lead pipe is pure lead, while the lead solder is alloyed with a bit of tin, making it harder.
You can turn Lead Antimony alloy into balls for ball mills. They're a special variety because they don't spark and are harder then pure so they last longer, which is crucial for milling flammable materials. Brass is the only other choice for non sparking balls and tends to cost more. Great vid
I think the lumps and bottom of your first setting gets were from not preheating the form pan.. too much moisture in your form pans can lead to explosions
The pits in the first pour is the Teflon burning out of the brownie sheets. It will cast deformed ugly ingots until you burn it all the way out. I always take my new pans in the blast cabinet first and blast with 120 grit aluminum oxide at 100 - 110 PSI. They don't do that anymore if you either season them first or blast out the Teflon.
I dont remember where you are, but you might be able to get the expended bullets from outdoor gun ranges. If they ate using a berm as a safety backdrop, you could just sift all the rounds out with their permission, of course. You might even find a little copper, too!
I always wondered what happened to Reese after Malcolm in the Middle finished.
Maybe if you added blue paint in to the mix you could of Invented "blead".
the first batch had discoloration because it came from the chemical coating in the pan. usually only visible for very first pour, then gone.
you can get bubbling from the ingot tray being too cold vs the molten bath
This video is like relaxation therapy for me. Great for my mental health and hopefully many others. You sir are the king fu Panda of scrap metal 👌 skadous 😂
It always amazes me that the steel clips from wheel weights float on the molten lead. Yes I understand the dwnsity factors but it's just weird seeing steel float.
You want trippy, try floating an anvil on mercury.
13:40
Having pure lead makes it easier because the guy has a metal "frame" there he pours the lead over. If it has all kind of shit in it that might not bond good with the wire and it will move inside the cast
I am experimenting with reverse electro refining (pulling gold off things) This requires a lead cathode.
Awesome video. Please remind people to make sure any lead you are going to drop into molten lead needs to be perfectly dry. No condensation or such. Same for the molds you are pouring lead into. I am sure most everyone here is aware of it, but molten lead can react violently to water/moisture.
If you know someone who works at a pawn shop, ask them to test your ingots with their XRF gun. XRF is used to test preciou metals. It shoots metals with Xrays and gets a graph of all the elements present based on how the Xrays bouce back.
Thank's for good idea how to sell Lead with better profit, instead to sell it for metal scrap-company.
Also a great flux for dirty lead on first melt is clean dry sawdust.
Wheel weights aint made out if lead anymore and they used be great for casting bullits. Now its zink
If you don't mind, how much did you pay the scrap yard for the lead sheet?
always personable.......good complete video!
I love your voice. 🥰
I just melted some lead yesterday. 59 grams of it. Took about 2 hours in a a fire to melt it, a burner or foundry is definitely better.
So CUZ, what d[you do with the doss/slagg/waiste? Is it scrappable or garbage?
Yep, there is something about liquified metal! Like the information, but dumpster diving search for treasures a wee bit more fun.
Ammunition reloading hobbyists that cast their own projectiles will buy lead. Also dive shops that cast their own dive weights. Lead is also used in sail boat keel weight. Both a good source and a market.
That does look fun.
Just cashed in 2 40gal electric water heaters in newfoundland i got $1 each next time i will leave them for the trash man.
I removed the brass t&p valves b4 selling them
I test my lead hardness and adjust the alloy from there. So I usually buy any lead I can find
People love the 10# bundles , even 20# sells pretty well , far easier to sell small "affordable" lots because not many people have the money
Keep up the good work 👍🏼 your videos are great 👌
Best damn ASMR video on RUclips 2024
Wheel weight lead needs tin added usually in the form of solder 60% lead 40% tin or 50/50 antimony is undesirable in that it’s hard to remove, it Is common in scrap battery plates these are hard to prevent shorting of the plate in a car crash.
Watching bigstackD's vid this week I find myself wondering what's the difference between die-cast Al and his zinc finds, and then of course how to tell them apart. Thoughts? Video idea?
I haven’t watched his most recent vid so I’m not sure how he’s using the term die-cast but I always use it interchangeably with the term zinc, which is also a misrepresentation because you’ll probably never find “zinc”. What’s usually found is an alloy of aluminium and zinc, very popular for casting because the melting temp is relatively low and it fills complex shapes really well. It’s also called “pot metal” or “zamek”. It’s a duller grey Color than aluminium, if you apply a solution of stump-out it will fizz and bubble, and it’s also noticeably heavier than aluminium would be. For me though, I always just look for the sprue marks: little circular spots that show where the material flowed into the mood and the sprue was broken away. Aluminium won’t have those.
This is totally rad thub, my yards seem to care less on coppers and solder on clean brass, if same for you yeah clean brass fully ✌️
Thub
LIFE
Great job.
I was gonna say, you can buy a lead ingot mold... But obviously you got there at the end, that is exactly what I would have suggested....
I use to sell printing type for bullets because it is a harder lead. I once filled a flat rate box to ship it in. You could hardly pick it up, must have created havoc going through the postal system. I think they now put a weight limit on the flat rate boxes. I also once melted and poured a 9000 lb sailboat keel. Fun to watch stainless bolts floating in melted lead. If you ever have to cut up some lead that is too big to move or melt ,the way to do that is with a chainsaw.
How do you clean the equipment? Is it possible to reuse it for other things or just smelting?
Once you use something for lead metal, better to never use it for anything else.
Did you start welding now? I see the hood behind you at the end.
The wheel weight lead could be used to make sinkers for fishing and youd probably make alot more brother
You can use artist pencils to determine the hardness of lead
hey man i love your videos, but i am not an expertt but i think you introduced moisture at 5 55 , im guessing you know why that is super dangerous, maybe putting the peices next to the fire would be a great way to make sure there is no moisture
Wheel weights in the USA are the high demand because so many ppl here cast bullets so they need the harder lead. Soft lead for blackpowder only
awesome!
FYI hard lead is less desirable for bullet casting and rendering a smoother cast
Love your videos!
Most of us today are only looking for soft lead. I mold sinkers and bullets. Sinkers are ok to do with dirty lead but bullets you want as pure as possible.
Soft pure lead is only good for black powder bullets. It's way too soft to be used in modern center fire smokeless powder cartridges. Even if you powder coat your bullets you should have at least 9 or 10 BHN. Pure lead is around 6 BHN or so and needs tin and antimony added to it to make it harder. You don't want to shoot anything in black powder firearms except pure lead.
Great video. Love how thorough you are with all of the steps and the "numbers". Did you happen to add in the expenses for the propane required? If so, how much was that total?
I didn’t calculate it into the totals as shown but over the two afternoons I spent heating the pot I used the same propane bottle, which had a little left at the end. I’d say just under $40?
I use to make my own bullets and have about 1000 pound of lead in 1 pound ingets bars that i don't need anymore so how did you sell your lead, where at?
I just list them locally through online marketplaces. It moves kinda slow but it does move
Cool vid thub!
You might want to contact a trap shooing range....tons of lead in the dirt down range.
I usually flux once with some pine sawdust, then once with candle wax. Made fishing weights today what is lead like that going for in canada now?
Amazing I got some lead but never thought about this, is it so in demand in the uk?
Yes thats why there are loads of knacker from ireland in england nicking it of church roofs.
battery clamps are hard lead which goes for $7 a pound.
iirc, you sell ingots to folks that cast reloading bullets. i know a guy who likes the clip on wheel weights as a way to control the hardness. you might consider melting the weights separately and marking them as such.
You make some really weird soup.
The bubbling is offgasing from zinc and its why zincs terriible contaminate when bullet casting.